The 15 Most Bizarre Animal Mating Rituals

#7. Whiptail Lizards

Native to Arizona, these lizards have apparently been infected with some manner of Sapphic Lilith Fair gene and somehow managed to entirely eliminate the male of the species.

As a result, the lizards are what scientists call "parthenogenetic unisexual pseudocopulators" but what we call "lesbo lizards." Since there are no males, the females reproduce on their own, making exact copies of themselves.

However, proving that porn has many life lessons to teach us, the lizards still need another woman to get the job done. A butchy female, noted by her small undeveloped eggs, will hop on another female who has rich, robust, ready-to-be-lesbianized eggs, and mock hump her lizard brains out while some awesome jazz plays in the background.

#6. Hyenas

The hyena is like that "woman" at the bar with an Adam's Apple, who asks you to call her Steve and does things to you in the bathroom that you'll never speak of to anyone ever again.

An alpha female in the hyena world passes on a super dose of hormones to its young that makes them extra aggressive, which increases their chances of survival. The downside is that all these extra hormones make mom awfully manish and since hyenas can't have man hands, they get the next best thing: a giant clitoris. A giant, 7-inch clitoris that just sticks out making people on safari feel shamed and emasculated.

Weird as that is, the further downside for the hyena here is that the birth canal is inside that giant clitoris, so in effect, the female has to give birth through a penis. This also means the male has to make sweet, awkward, hit-and-miss love to one, which can apparently take months of practice until he can line everything up right. Once the magical moment happens, she pushes him off and puts a cigarette out on his thigh.

#5. White-Fronted Parrots

This is another one of those very few species besides humans that engage in kissing, isn't that just so friggin' precious? When they initiate mating, they snuggle up together and lock lips, which isn't easy when you have those bird lips known as "beaks." However, once the male is pretty sure the lady bird is digging his tongue dancing, he takes things to the next level the way only a true man can. With vomit.

Like so many off-putting video clips from Japan that find their way into our inbox, the birds mix sex and puking in a way nearly half our editorial staff are uncomfortable with.

#4. Bed Bugs

Feel free to not read further as this is the kind of stuff generally found in direct-to-DVD horror films, usually with a title like Drill Rape.

Yes, unlike some animals with their adorable-like-a-Disney-cartoon courting rituals that actually take the time to find the female's genitalia, bed bugs at some point just said "fuck it" and developed the most horrifyingly-named mating practice called "traumatic insemination."

To overcome the female's resistance against getting boned, the bed bug basically just stabs a random hole in her abdomen with his penis and then inseminates her. It is unclear whether "traumatic" refers to the mating ritual itself or just the fact a bed bug is packing a Johnson as sharp as a Ginsu knife.

#3. Anglerfish

The male anglerfish is born as and lives his life as one giant, useless freeloader. This is the boyfriend who'll move in and live on your sofa while he holds out for a job that doesn't require him to do anything.

As soon as the male anglerfish is old enough, its entire digestive system shuts down. Since it can no longer eat or live on its own, it needs to find a woman to mooch off of.

Once it does so, he bites her and releases an enzyme that bonds their flesh together permanently, thus making the male a parasite that lives off the female, releasing sperm whenever she's ready to lay eggs. So, while those teeth make them look badass, the anglerfish is nature's ultimate symbol of clingy wussification.

#2. Porcupines

As you can probably guess, the male porcupine isn't getting any unless the female is good and ready. Not unless he wants hundreds of needles in his dick.

So how does the male get her ready? Well porcupines are apparently very European when it comes to mating, which is to say they piss on each other (no offense to Europeans, we've just seen some movies produced in Eastern Europe and noticed some common themes).

This tiny four-legged animal manages a six-foot-long stream of piss that soaks his potential mate from head to toe. So, accounting for scale, this would be equivalent of a human pissing for over 100 feet, which we think would, in fact, impress some females.

#1. Cichlid Fish

These have to be the frat boy heroes of the animal kingdom, with a mating ritual seemingly designed purely to get high fives from its bros.

After laying her eggs, the female cichlid picks them up and carries them around in her mouth. Some males thus have spots on their lower body that resemble the eggs. They swim by the females, who see the fake eggs and, thinking they have dropped some, try to suck them in.

The male then blows his load in her face and open mouth, presumably while his friends film the whole thing and post it on the internet.